


There Are Magical Things

by SaltCore



Series: We Get What We Deserve [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Grade A Fuckboi Genji, Hanzo has always been tired, Language, Light Angst, Young Genji Shimada, Young Hanzo Shimada, crunchy meta under a thin chocolatey later of plot, mild implied drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 07:08:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12206346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltCore/pseuds/SaltCore
Summary: It's Genji's turn to claim his birthright. He's not worried though, after all, how hard can it really be?





	There Are Magical Things

**Author's Note:**

> I would recommend reading the first work in this series, as this installment isn't meant to stand 100% on it's own. But you do you, fair reader.
> 
> Shout out to the anon on tumblr who asked me about this series and got me to write 2k words of rambling dragon meta. I shamed myself into finishing this after how quickly I banged that out.
> 
> (Title shamelessly lifted from Tanis and PNWS.)

                Genji fidgets, shaking out his limbs. The formal clothes are stifling and restricting, not to mention utterly appalling on both a visual and existential level. Imagine if anyone saw him, all dressed up like a period character in a shit movie. He would literally die of embarrassment. Dad had already given his approval, but Hanzo is still staring him down, and his brother can find fault in anything. It’s the world’s most infuriating superpower. Genji waits impatiently to hear about whatever insignificant detail he’d fucked up so he can tell Hanzo off and get moving. He wants a cigarette, or a drink, or anything really, so long as it would take his mind off his brother’s nit picking.

                “Father’s right, you’re ready. You’ll be fine,” Hanzo says. He’s frowning, but that’s just his face. Genji opens his mouth to say something nasty, but his brain catches up with his ears before he speaks. That wasn’t sarcasm. The side of Hanzo’s mouth is turned up, and that’s basically a kilowatt grin for him.

                “Really—uh, I mean, _duh_.”

                Hanzo reaches out and grabs him by the shoulder. Not in the tight way he does when he’s about to lecture him, but almost gently. Genji looks at his hand in shock. The fuck has gotten into Hanzo?

                “Any of them will be lucky to have you.”

                Genji wants to say something crass, something about there being plenty of him to go around, but he thinks better of it. He knows all about that shadow that hangs over Hanzo, about how there’s some things you only want one measure of. The memory of the last time the three of them stood in the garden springs into his thoughts. That was the last time he really felt like he knew Hanzo. What a fucking awful night. Genji throws his arms around Hanzo’s neck, wrinkles in his ridiculous outfit be damned. Hanzo pats his back, though he’s not really returning the hug. Probably trying to mitigate the damage.

                Genji squeezes once, because he kind of wants the wrinkles now, and steps back. He walks over to where his dad is sitting on a bench. He reaches out and squeezes one of Genji’s hands. It’s a secret between him and dad, but he’d been having _those_ dreams since he was sixteen. The dreams about the wordless singing and the breathing darkness and the _other stuff_. Stuff he can’t really remember until he gets _super_ fucked up. He’s practically nineteen now, and frankly he’s glad to be getting it over with.

                “Be careful,” he says.

                “I’m always careful.”

                Hanzo snorts. Their dad laughs softly. Genji rolls his eyes.

                “Okay, fine, I’ll actually be careful.” Genji turns to face the mouth of the Well. “Here I go.”

                Genji feels nervous, but he’s not going to let either of them see. He walks into the cave with all of his usual swagger, the dark and the danger be damned. If his idiot cousin Touma can figure it out, it can’t possibly be that hard to get a spirit dragon. Of course, if anyone would have bothered to give him some spoilers, that would've been stellar, but it’s too late now. They’d all gotten weird about it when Genji asked, and half of them said cryptic shit. _You’ll just know. It’s not something you can describe. You already know the way_. What the fuck is his family even.

                He keeps marching until he trips on a rock, because it’s a fucking cave and dark as shit. He looks over his shoulder, but the mouth is just a dim, slightly less dark patch. Maybe the reason people didn’t come back is that they tripped and broke their necks. Which means there’s probably skeletons and shit in here. Genji shudders. Nasty. 

                He slows down, sets his hand on the wall. It’s damp and cold, but better than dying like an idiot in the dark. It’s not like anyone can see him anyway. Genji can’t believe Hanzo did this when he was fourteen. Genji was scared of girls at fourteen, if he’d have had to go in here in the middle of the night he’d have pissed himself.

                The passage slowly curves to the left, and it’s not long before Genji is engulfed by absolute darkness. He stops to wave his hand in front of his face. Nothing. Might as well be blind. It’s unsettling, but he hasn’t been afraid of the dark in a while. Knowing that something weird is definitely going to happen takes the edge off.

                He swears, if one of his cousins is down here already to jump out at him and tell him the dragon was inside him all along, he will kill them. Doesn’t matter which one it is, he’ll kill them with his bare hands. A bunch of superstitious shit and a jump scare would absolutely be their style.

                Genji’s grumbling denigrations about his extended family, so he doesn’t hear the sound at first—a low, keening noise, constant but soft. He twists his head back and forth, but he can’t pinpoint where it’s coming from. It’s like it’s coming from everywhere at once. It has an organic quality to it, almost voice like. It fades in and out as he walks, but it never quite stops, like whatever’s making it doesn’t need to breathe. It’s familiar too, but Genji can’t quite put his finger on it.

                Guess there really is something down here.

                Genji rolls his shoulders. There’s nothing to be worried about. He’s supposed to be here, he _wants_ to be here. This has been hanging over his head for way too long. He wishes he knew why his dad wouldn’t let him go when he was sixteen. He also wishes he could fucking see.

                He’s had years to speculate about this walk, to twist himself into knots with trepidation and uncertainty, but he can’t argue with the results. He’s only seen Hanzo’s dragons three times, and maybe encountered a half dozen others, but it’s breathtaking every time. Hanzo, especially. The first time, the night Hanzo got them, wasn’t much until you really thought about how two inexplicable spirits were now living under the skin of a fourteen year old boy. The second, Genji had snuck out to watch dad and the rest of the elders teach Hanzo how to summon them properly. It had only been for a minute, but that was enough. The two dragons put the color of the sky to shame; they were glittering like liquid sapphires, twisting around Hanzo’s sword and arms.

                The third time. Holy fuck the third time. Dad had sent Hanzo, Genji, and Touma to meet with a few representatives of the Russian mob. It was supposed to be a formality, a show of good faith, sending the sons of the oyabun to make the final arrangements of a mutually lucrative money laundering deal. Long story short, the fucking opportunists they’d met had been planning on doing some light kidnapping, followed by a hefty pay out from their dad, and fuck whatever deal their boss had planned. After all, he’d been foolish enough to sends his sons without any body guards.

                Hanzo had sneered at them, and simply told them _No_.

                The next moment, his sword was in his hands and both dragons had exploded into the universe, the three of them roaring and charging forward. Genji had jumped back, desperate to not be in the way. The whole fight, if you could call it that, lasted maybe thirty seconds. Hanzo moved with an inhuman speed, seemingly in one place then appearing in another, cutting down man after man before anyone could get a shot off.  The dragons rent and tore as Hanzo cut, blood boiled and skin burnt and bones snapped. 

                When it was over, Hanzo was standing on the far side of a dozen mangled corpses. The thing that struck Genji was how little blood there actually was. The sword was practically clean. Hanzo had bifurcated more than one of them, and the wounds were burnt black all the way through, the skin around it blistered and weeping. The room stunk of ozone and evaporated blood and burnt meat. Touma vomited onto his own shoes.  Genji had been too petrified to say anything glib.

                Hanzo shooed them both out, looking more annoyed than anything. Certainly not like he’d just obliterated twelve souls from the face of the earth. He wasn’t even out of breath. They weren’t doing any business with the Russians for the foreseeable future, but dad had seemed to think Hanzo had done plenty to settle the insult.

                So, yeah, Genji got it. For power like that, you’d spend a night in a cave full of creepy, sourceless noise. Hopefully he doesn’t start saying weird shit like the rest of the family though. That might be the only deal breaker.

                As Genji goes, two strange things happen. The first, the noise settles on a volume, becoming a constant wordless hum. It feels like his whole body thrums with it, like a tuning fork. The second is shades of gray emerging out of the pitch black. He can see again. Genji stops at that, looks around. He can’t see a light source, no movement in the air that would indicate a crack in the walls. He lifts his foot to take a step back, to see if there’s some line between seeing and not, but something in his gut makes him stop. Going back, even a step, is a very bad idea. Genji steps forward instead. It doesn’t get any brighter, but he can tell the difference between the walls and the floor, can see the gentle bend of the tunnel to the left. He keeps his hand on the wall though, just in case.

                Genji has no idea how long he’s been walking, but finally, finally he walks into a cavern. The floor is sandy under his feet, less treacherous than the rock strewn tunnel. He can make out the ceiling if he squints, maybe two stories up. The cavern is roughly round, only about forty feet to the far wall from where he’s standing. In the center there’s a literal well, like something out of a history book. It’s wide, much wider than Genji is tall, and encircled by a low wall of rough cut stone. There’s an old rope piled on the ground next to wall, but it looks like it might disintegrate if Genji were to touch it. There’s no bucket in sight.          

                Genji walks up to the well and looks in. Dark, which he expects, but there’s something glittering in the depths, which he doesn’t. He walks around the edge of the wall, looking down. He comes back to where he started and he sees a staircase, tucked into the side of the well.

                Genji could have sworn that wasn’t there a second ago. Genji walks around the well one more time, but the stairs stay. He looks around again, but there’s no opening beside the well and the passage he used to enter.  The noise begins to change again, take on something urgent. It’s then that Genji remembers why it’s familiar. It’s like the singing from his dreams. It’s not quite the same, but then the singing had changed over the years.

                Taking a deep breath, Genji steps over the low wall. The stairs are stone and worn, but still solid. Genji starts down, taking each step carefully. His footing is always sure, and he’s grateful for that now. It’s impossible to tell how deep this well is. The stairs get tighter as he goes, and before long he can almost touch the opposite wall.

                He’s started to think he’s wasted his time going down here, that he missed something in the room upstairs, when the noise suddenly stops. In the sudden silence his breathing seems thunderous. He takes another few steps, careful not to make any noise. The stairs end in a small landing. The air here is stale in a way it hadn’t been further up. A trough is cut into the stone, catching water that’s bubbling up from a spring and leading it into a stone archway. The stream glitters, as if reflecting light. Genji looks up again, but there’s nothing for it to reflect. Shadows move in the water, too long and too narrow to be fish, but moving in a way too deliberate to be plants.

                Genji reaches down and touches the water. It doesn’t _feel_ like water. It’s almost slimy, like there’s soap in it, and it’s tepid in a way that strikes him as wrong. He wipes his fingers on his shirt and turns to the archway. It’s just tall enough for him to walk comfortably. He enters.

                The only sound is the water flowing. He’s careful of his footsteps, more careful that he’s ever been in his life. This place has him on edge. Something isn’t right about it, and like everything else, he’s not sure why. He remembers Hanzo again. He can be at least as brave as a fourteen year old. Even if that fourteen year old came out a dead man.

                He knows, despite all the effort that went into hiding it, what a delicate position Hanzo occupies. He’s powerful, in the old mythical sense of the word, but it’s eating away at him. A cousin, a woman a little older than their dad and the precise relationship they shared Genji was never quite clear on, had just died a few months ago. When Genji had seen her at a meeting a year ago, she had been healthy looking and sharp. A little gray streaking her hair, but it only served to make her look wiser and sterner. When dad had gone to pay her a final visit, Genji had been startled by the change. She was thin and frail, her skin laying like rice paper over her bones, hair gone, eyes dull. They’d given her so much morphine she was barely lucid. He’d caught a glance at her charts, and the standard female outline was filled with ugly red blobs. Tumors, malignant and consuming, spread all throughout her body. The funeral had been a few days afterwards.

                Unbidden, the image of laying Hanzo’s urn next his mother’s floats to the surface of Genji’s mind. It’s a nightmare that’s haunted him in various iterations since shortly after Hanzo came out of the Well. He _knows_ he’ll have to watch Hanzo die, as much as he tries not to dwell on it, and it could be soon. It could be a year from now, for all Genji knows. Genji would want to _live_ , but Hanzo just spends his days in meetings for the family or in his classes or very, very rarely going out and putting those dragons to use. Assassinations, the real source of the Shimada clan’s staying power and a closely kept secret, are something only blood relatives take up. Genji has gone as backup a handful of times, but now he’ll be on the roster proper. He’s not sure how he feels about it. The Hanzo from his boyhood would have told him all about it, given him something to base a judgement. The Hanzo he has now just lectures him and ignores him by turns. Sometimes, Genji feels like he has to do everything he can to do the real living for the both of them.

                Of course, to keep doing that, he’d have to get out of this cave. His feet _hurt_. These aren’t shoes meant for walking, and he could swear he’s walked kilometer after kilometer down here. He’s probably not even under Hanamura anymore. Hanzo had only been gone for a couple of hours, and he’s pretty sure he’s been down here for most of a day. He wonders again if he’s fucked something up, missed a turn or a marker. The incessant burbling of the stream won’t let him forget about his thirst. He’s hungry too, but the burning in his throat seems more pressing.

                A few times, he bends down to check the water. It’s still slimy and strange, and he’s afraid to drink it. They say not to drink ocean water, even if it feels like you’re dying, and something about this stream feels as dangerous. Once, something touches his fingers, and he jerks his hand back, falling in his haste to get away from whatever it was. The scraping of his shoes and hands on the stone seems to echo for way too long, and he can’t make himself move until the silence returns.

                He’s starting to wonder if giving up might be worth the embarrassment, when something ahead of him catches his attention. There is light, real light. He picks up his pace, still careful to move silently. The tunnel grows taller as he goes, until the ceiling and walls are lost in the dimness above and around. The stream never changes, as far as he can tell, and he follows it instead of the walls.

                Genji sees a bucket bobbing on the stream, old and wooden. There’s a small, frayed tail of rope hanging from the handle. Genji plucks it out of the water. There’s liquid at the bottom of the bucket. He dips his fingers into it, and it feels like water, real water, not slimy at all.

                Genji takes a sip.

\--

                Genji wakes slowly, feeling bleary like he has a hangover but not as sick. Wherever he is, it’s mercifully dim. When he blinks his vision clear, he can see sky above him, glittering with stars. It’s like nothing he’s ever seen before. The closest thing was the time his father took them out to a house in the country for a long weekend. He’d pointed out constellations, and they’d chased fireflies around the yard like children half their actual ages. His father’s men had been sent away and they’d brought no staff. For a few days the three of them had just been a family like any other.

                Genji stares up at the stars now, trying to remember the shapes of the constellations. Nothing in the sky in familiar. He looks around. He’s in a picturesque clearing in a forest—soft moss underneath him, tall, wide trees all around, a shallow stream flowing a few feet away. It’s more like a movie set than reality. The bucket is lying on its side near his feet. He’s not thirsty anymore, not hungry either.

                He gets to his feet, dusting himself off. This is all pretty fucking weird, but weird is what he was expecting. He circles the clearing. The woods seem to go on forever, no lights anywhere but the stars. Genji wishes he’d brought something to smoke, just to have something to do with his hands. He turns a slow circle, wondering where to go next, when it appears.

                Genji doesn’t move, doesn’t even breathe. It’s sure as shit not a dragon. It’s vaguely humanoid, but the proportions are off—torso is too long, legs too short, the face such in name only. It looks like something a blind alien would construct on hearsay of what humans look like. He can’t get his eyes to focus on the outline, and it makes his head hurt to try. There’s a constantly shifting glow, light is shining through its skin, casting a green tint over everything in the clearing. The surface of the thing begins to move, like there’s something crawling underneath it, and it silently begins to contort. Genji misses the precise moment, he must have blinked, but it becomes an eerie facsimile of himself, though still faintly green and still hard to look at.

                “You are very far.”

                The voice is strange and so, so familiar. It’s the same as the singing, Genji is positive. Dragon or no, this is it.

                “So how does this work?” Genji asks.

                “You are very late,” it says, seeming to ignore his question. Genji doesn’t really have an answer for that. Would be too caught up staring at the double even if he did. “We did not think you would come.”

                “Well, shit happens. I’m here now.”

                It tilts its head, as if curious. It’s staring right at him, right _through_ him maybe. The glow gets brighter, and it gets harder to look at directly. He could swear the green light has a pressure, that he can feel it on his skin. He doesn’t like the feeling.

                “We do not expect each other.”

                It’s like taking to someone going senile. Genji can’t help but roll his eyes. Maybe this is some kind of test or something, but if it is, Genji’s pretty sure he’s going to lose his patience and fail. It rolls its eyes back at him. Genji genuinely doesn’t know if he’s being mocked.

                The thing suddenly begins to twist, limbs contorting and shifting, like something out of a horror movie. Watching himself curl in way that would definitely break bones makes bile rise up in the back of his throat. In a few short moments, the thing has taken on a distinctly draconic appearance, vibrantly green and almost comically similar to the many paintings in the castle.

                Somehow, as bizarre as it is to think it, he feels the air crackle with curiosity. It slithers closer, lays its long body in a circle around Genji, and rests its head in front of him. The green light seems brighter, but also more tolerable somehow.

                “Perhaps I should say, we are each not what the other was expecting. You favor this shape for communion? Despite it being so foreign to your own?”

                It seems to be waiting for Genji to answer.

                “The other one was a little too familiar, you know?”

                “But fascinating. The precision required to vibrate the air in order to elicit reaction, and practically autonomic!  What a strange way to convey oneself.”

                The mouth of the dragon doesn’t move, but it’s still speaking, somehow. It sounds like it’s coming from everywhere at once. Genji twists his head a little, trying to pinpoint an origin. There doesn’t seem to be one.

                “Where am I, anyway? You said it was far.” Very far, whatever that means.

                “A confluence. A good place to wait. A strange place to find one of you.”

                “You’re telling me,” Genji mumbles. Was he not supposed to go this far? It wouldn’t be the first time his impatience bit him in the ass. “So, what happens? You come back with me, right?”

                “Already?” it says. It sounds strangely bereft.  Genji looks around again. It’s not like he knows where he is, or how to leave. Or like he has anything better to be doing. No one had ever mentioned getting to talk to the dragons first, and he has to admit, he’s curious. This might be his only chance. He sits down on the moss, crossing his legs.

                “No rush. Here, let’s start with the basics. I’m Shimada Genji. What’s your name?”

                The dragon, if that really is what this thing is, seems to consider him. If Genji’s life depended on the guess, he’d say its eyes are just for show, but his skin is crawling with the feeling of being watched. He has this thing’s full attention. It reaches out a clawed foreleg and wraps it around Genji’s arm. It tingles at first, then it sinks its claws under his skin and—

                Pine, he smells pine and something else, something old and musty and wet. Like an abandoned house, mostly reclaimed by nature. He feels the weight of an entire planet and all its ages, like he’s experiencing the very concept of depth firsthand. He is low, he is under, and still he is falling. All he can see is darkness but somehow it’s so dark it’s bright and it glitters and it hurts. He feels lonely and he feels determined and he feels like he must move.

                It’s over as suddenly as it began. Genji is aware of the clearing again. The dragon doesn’t let his arm go, but it stopped whatever it was doing. Five thin rivulets of blood are dripping down his arm and staining his clothes.

                “I—I don’t think I know how to say that.” Genji murmurs. The feeling is still with him, but already fading. He, inexplicably, remembers a story his dad once told him about a tree spirit. He’s always had something of a theatrical flair and had taken the time to drive home how strange and how old the spirit was. Genji remembers the feeling the description had conjured, all that time ago. It’s more like the way this thing makes him feel than not. “Kodama. May I call you Kodama?”

                He feels more than hears the assent. It’s like it has tapped into his nerves. For all Genji, knows it has. Genji wonders, if he’s given the dragon a name should he continue thinking of it an as it? He? She? Nobody had ever warned him about this.

                He feels himself being pushed aside in his own mind, feels something else picking through his memories, like looking through the shelves in a shop.

_First time he got high, the easy feeling he’s chased ever since—_

_His brother, a year ago, curling his lip at his own wet shoes after stepping in a puddle that was deeper than it looked—_

_His mom, teaching him to count, her voice soft and soothing—_

_The pain when he broke his arm falling out of a tree at six—_

_The threesome he had two months ago, he doesn’t remember their names but he remembers their clever fingers and the taste of their lip gloss—_

_Sitting in a too-hot classroom, bored out of his skull and wondering if he could stick his pen in the ceiling without the teacher noticing—_

_Sneaking through his home, looking for his brother, determined not to lose hide and seek this time—_

_Eating ice cream until his stomach hurt—_

_The old nanny who would give him candy after he ate all his lunch and her fond smiles—_

_The cousin who would go to the clubs with him until she came here and stopped being fun—_

                “I like _her_.”

                “Okay, I can work with that, Kodama.”

 _She_ releases his arm. The tingling fades almost immediately. Genji flexes his hand, but it doesn’t seem like she did any real harm. The blood is already dry, and he brushes it off his skin.

                “So, why do you come here?”

                “Warmth,” she says, as if that explains everything. Genji laughs, it's so bizarre he can't help it.

                “Do you not have coats where you’re from?”

                “The differentials have degraded,” she says, and yeah, those are all words in an order. Genji sighs. Maybe this is one of those _ineffable things_ the elders go on about.

                “Okay, well, why us? I’m a good time, but, like, my brother’s _super_ boring.”

                “Brother?”

                “Like, we have the same parents?” That gets him nothing. “He has two dragons. They’re blue?”

                “Ah, the binary pair. It was considered unlikely they would find a suitable host. Exciting to see them go.”

                That, quite suddenly, lights Genji’s anger, hot and fierce. How fucking callous.

                “That’s fine for you to say. They’re killing my brother,” he snaps.

                Genji immediately regrets saying that. He can take an attitude with the elders, but he doesn’t have a father and brother down here to protect him. She could kill him on the spot, and there’s nothing to make her think twice.

                She doesn’t lash out. If anything, she seems to be studying him more intensely.

                “Killing him?”

                “Yeah, you know. Make him dead. The way you make us all dead, except faster.”

                The dragon comes closer, the long coil of its body tightening. The green light gets brighter, drowning out the dimmer stars above.

                “We make you,” she stops for a long, awkward moment. “Stop?”

                “Yeah, I mean, usually. It’s the, the radiation I think? I’m not a doctor.”

                “Explain.”

                Genji tries. He doesn’t quite understand the mechanics, he’s never paid it much attention, but he tries to call up his biology lectures and memories of hospital visits. Every subject he broaches brings more of her demands for explanation, and eventually it’s hard to keep his eyes open. She tells him to sleep, and he does. When he wakes, he’s not tired or hungry or thirsty. He doesn’t question it.

                She asks him to pick up where he left off.

                The cycle repeats maybe half a dozen times, Genji isn’t sure. The light never changes and his body doesn’t seem to want anything more than sleep. She doesn’t give him much time to dwell, she wants to know _everything_. The mundane seems to interest her as much as the weightier subjects. She makes him explain funerals, shoes, dance music, war—Genji never knows what will catch her interest next.

                In return, she tries to talk about herself, but she seems to be at a disadvantage.  Words don’t seem to come easily, and her language doesn’t get more natural with practice. She doesn’t do the thing she did before, the touching, but he can feel her frustration. He learns she has been trying to go back through the Well for some time, and that there are other places to go but they are empty. Boring.

                As she tries to communicate it, restlessness creeps up on Genji. He’s not sure if it’s hers or his or both. He’s been down here a long, long time. He wonders if Hanzo and his dad are still waiting outside, or if they’d been called away to attend to something or other. He wonders if he’s been missed at any of his usual haunts.

                Her words peter out. Genji looks around again. The same strange stars are overhead, the same stream, the same forest. It’s like no time has passed at all, though he knows it has. He really wants to get home, just to know that he can. He gets to his feet and stretches.

                “If you want to come back with me, then maybe we should go.”

                She pulls away from him. She seems almost hesitant.

                “I do not wish to hurt you.”

                “Well, that’s the deal, isn’t?”

                “No,” she says with finality. “I understand the flaw. I can do better.”

                That honestly hadn’t occurred to Genji. But if she thinks she can, well, Genji will welcome her to try.

                “All right, let's do it.”

                “Yes. It is past time.”

                She twists her head away and eyes, real eyes, open down her neck and across her body down to her tail, each a lightless void. All the fine hairs on Genji’s body stand and his body freezes in pure animal terror. He feels exposed, like there are cracks in him that she’s peering through to something fundamental to his being.

                She appears closer, somehow, without having traversed the intervening space. All those eyes are still focused on him. She reaches out snout first and begins to lose her shape. Genji doesn’t see her touch him, but somehow she gets inside.  She’s cold, colder than anything Genji’s ever felt, so cold it burns. He wants to scream but he can’t find the air. He wants to collapse but he can’t make himself move. He thinks he might have be frozen in place, that if he tries to move he’ll shatter. He’s sure he’s about to die.

                Suddenly, the song bursts into his thoughts, like having it stuck in his head. He feels the fear ebb, displaced by calm. He can also feel the air on his skin and in his lungs and the beat of his own heart and he swears, he swears he can feel every cell in his body living and working and dying. He can feel her behind his eyes and twisting in his bones and glowing under his skin. He takes a slow breath. He doesn’t shatter. He rubs his arms, stamps his feet, blows into his hands. The cold feeling is passing.

                “What the fuck. _What the fuck_.”

\--

                Hanzo is pacing. He’s been pacing since the sun crested the horizon, hours and hours after Genji went into the Well. It should have taken a few hours at most, and, yes, Genji tends to dawdle and waste time, but _in there_? No. No one would stay down there longer than necessary, not even Genji. Not even as some ill-conceived prank. Hanzo glances over to his father, who’s sitting still as a statue on the bench. He’s not a delicate man by any stretch, and though he’s past his youth, he’s still fit and strong. You wouldn’t know it, if you’d only seen him now. He looks ashen, almost fragile. Hanzo doesn’t want to consider what it would do to him if Genji never comes back out. Hanzo doesn’t want to consider it, period. Genji is over-indulged, selfish, Hanzo would go so far as calling him a petulant brat, but he’s still Hanzo’s little brother. Hanzo wants him back up here with them, safe and sound.

                The fight he and his father had just before dawn still has Hanzo on edge. Hanzo had wanted to go into to the Well. For better or worse, he has the favor of the spirits within, and maybe if he went quickly, he could retrieve Genji. Father had forbidden it. Neither of them know what would happen if Hanzo went in, but the old man has grown cautious in age and refused to take the risk. Hanzo is honoring his wishes, as wrong as he thinks it is.

                 Hanzo’s so consumed with his own thoughts that he doesn’t notice his father stand up until he shouts.

                “Genji!” 

                He runs to mouth of the Well, where Genji is standing, looking a little dazed. Hanzo strides over himself. Father has pulled Genji down into his arms, gripping him tightly. Hanzo tries to catch his eyes, to give him a questioning look.

                “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Genji mumbles. He’s staring at his arm like he’s never seen it before.

                “What’s that, son?” their father asks.

                “It’s still light out? That can’t be right.”

                “It’s almost afternoon, Genji,” Hanzo says tightly. “You were gone for almost sixteen hours.”

                “That doesn’t seem right either.” He lifts his arms to hug their father back loosely, like it’s an afterthought. Genji’s gaze is wandering around the garden, not particularly focused. He looks like he’s high, _again_ , but Hanzo stops himself before accusing him of anything. No one he’s ever met has spent sixteen hours in the Well, and Genji had been taking this seriously. He certainly hadn’t taken anything in there. It would be suicide.

                Father lets Genji go, starts looking him over. He pokes and prods, looking tense as he does so. Genji flinches and twists away, but Father catches his wrist and makes him stay. He shares a tight look with Hanzo, then pulls out his phone.

                “Yes, Dr. Tanaka? Could you come to the house immediately? Very good.”

\--

                The doctor pronounces Genji fit. Genji had come around in the time it had taken him to get there, though he still seems to be having trouble concentrating. The family doctor has his job based as much on his discretion as his expertise, and he doesn’t prod much about the circumstances that led to the visit. Hanzo suspects that he’s smart enough to know something strange is afoot, but also that he’s smart enough to know he’s better off ignorant of the specifics.

                The doctor leaves Genji with a prescription for rest and fluids, and to call again if he seems to decline. Father practically carries to him to his room to sleep, leaving Hanzo to deal with his agenda as his proxy. It’s not so unusual, his father occasionally takes time to fuss over Genji when he makes himself sick, and his schedule for the rest of day contains nothing out of routine. As much as Hanzo usually wishes his father would let Genji suffer and perhaps, maybe, _learn_ not to overindulge, this time he doesn’t begrudge him.

\--

                It’s _fascinating_. He can feel her prodding his nerves, curling into his unburdened synapses. She has a kind of heartbeat, a rhythm, a gentle ebb and flow of _thereness_. Everything is new to her, and her excitement is contagious. He spent almost an hour in his shower this morning because the feeling of water hitting his skin had her giddy. Breakfast was as fascinating for him—he’d never truly considered the texture of food before. His dad and Hanzo are stilling giving him looks, but, c’mon, really? How could they expect him to act normally where there was _so much_?

                There’s more than just her feeling him out. He can sense new things too. When any of his family are close he can feel a kind of pressure. A first he doesn’t understand it, but she gives him a taste of familiarity and he puts it together. He’s feeling the other dragons.

                Father’s is like the gnarled, rough bark of a tree. It’s hard to sense until he gets close, and then it explodes through the new sense, rough and unyielding. He runs into an uncle, and his dragon is smoother, leaking out into the air around him. A distant cousin is with him, and hers makes his teeth hum. He doesn’t think there’s a texture to name, just something like standing too close to a speaker in a club.

                Hanzo, though, Hanzo is something else. Standing in the same room as Hanzo is like getting caught in the eyewall of a typhoon. He staggers the first time he’s aware of it. Hanzo notices, comes over to check on him, and that makes it worse. They surge and fade like she does, sometimes almost gone and sometimes almost enough to make his vision go gray, but it’s not a regular cadence, like the two dragons aren’t quite in sync. Genji just tries to breathe through it.

                She feels his distress, pushes back. Gives him room to breathe, then reaches out toward Hanzo, towards his spirits. Genji is aware of the exchange, the fact of it, but he can’t begin to understand what she says. The maelstrom around Hanzo dims, and he can focus on what going on around him again. He’s weak kneed with gratitude.

                Hanzo props him up, hands on both his shoulders. His expression is tight, lips pressed into a thin line. Not angry, though, that much Genji is sure. Usually when he’s in Genji’s space like this he’s angry.

                “Sit down, Genji, I’m going to call the doctor.”

                “No, no, don’t, I’m fine,” Genji says, standing up straight again. Hanzo reluctantly drops his hands, letting them hover for a moment as if Genji might still tip over.

                “You aren’t,” Hanzo saying, scowling. “You’re pale and clammy.”

                “I’m just—” Genji trails off. He’s just what? Overwhelmed, perhaps? Still adjusting? Both and something else besides? He wishes he could give Hanzo the feeling, like she does for him. It’s so much _easier_. “Don’t call. I’ve got it under control.”

                Hanzo sighs, rubs one temple like he’s got a headache coming on. He probably does, as tense as he looks. There’s no way he doesn’t remember how it was at first, though Genji can’t remember him talking about it. Maybe he didn’t have the words either.

                Genji doesn’t spend a lot of time at home after that. It’s a lot, being around the others, too much really. She can dampen it, but she overdid it once already and he lost the feeling in his fingers and toes for hours. No, he’d rather go out and let her really get a taste of the world.

                The clubs are amazing. The music and the lights and the alcohol are novel again and she sits close to the surface, making his whole body tingle. She does something and he can _see_ the patterns the music makes in the air, like a kaleidoscope in colors he can’t name.  The EM fields around every light and wire light up, casting everything in a soft blur. This the kind of thing every psychedelic on the market promises and fails to deliver.

                He runs into friends and they wander from place to place like it’s any other night. If they notice his distraction, they don’t say anything, and he ends up spending the night in one of their apartments. He goes home the next morning to show his face and change his clothes, then he gets on the subway and just roams. There’s so much he couldn’t perceive before and he wants to soak it all up. How can everyone else in the family be so uptight all the time when they feel like this?

                The question, once he thinks of it, eats at him.  He asks her, but her answer is opaque. A jumbled feeling he can’t name. She tries a couple of iterations before letting it go. He’ll just have to ask one of his own.

\--

                This close, despite her interference, he can feel the strange pressure of Hanzo’s twins. They buffet him, buffet her, even while not particularly engaged. He feels through her that their attention is on something else, that they are hardly paying her any mind. He wonders if she feels miffed.

                “Do—do you ?” Genji starts, gesturing broadly. “Do you _feel_ them?”

                Hanzo sets down his tablet, turning to look at Genji.  He seems to be considering his answer. Genji takes the opportunity to really look at him. As always, he seems put together—hair perfectly arranged, a modest touch of makeup, clothes sharp and neat—but there are dark circles under his eyes and the barest slump to his shoulders. Something about him seems spread thin. Genji couldn’t say when the last time he saw him do anything but work or study was.

                “I’m really not sure what you’re asking,” he sighs. Genji lets his hands fall, settles them in his lap. The realization creeps into his mind—Hanzo really _doesn’t_ know. He feels her picking at his nerves, making the back of his neck feel cold and gooseflesh rise. He’s not sure what the feeling is supposed to be, but he feels a kind of sadness on Hanzo’s behalf.

                “It’s, uh, nothing, I’m teasing,” Genji says, smiling brightly and hoping Hanzo brushes him off. He’s not sure how he could explain it anyway, not without sounding crazy or high. Hanzo turns to face him more fully instead.

                “We’ve—I’ve been worried about you, Genji. You’ve been acting strangely since—” Hanzo trails off.

                “I’m fine.” Genji tries to muster all of his sincerity. He’s more than fine, if he’s being honest. Hanzo doesn’t seem convinced.  He’s got that look dad sometimes gets, where he’s concerned and resigned. Genji can’t remember ever seeing it from Hanzo.

                “How is your first semester of college going?” Hanzo asks, abruptly.

                “ _What_?”

                “Do you like your classes?” Hanzo asks, doubling down. Genji blinks at him, caught completely off guard.

                “Uh, yeah, there’s a history of cinema course that’s actually pretty fun,” Genji says, completely honestly. “I’m taking it with some friends.”

                Hanzo hums, lifting a skeptical eyebrow.

                “I really go, I swear!”

                “Yes, you were so studious in high school.” The edges of Hanzo’s lips quirk up, just for a second. Genji briefly worries his brother has been replaced. He’s being _teased_.

                “I’m done for the day, let’s go out. It’s been too long since we got time to catch up,” Hanzo says. “One of your places, I’d like to be invited back to mine.”

                “You don’t go out. I have it on good authority.” Hanzo has definitely been replaced, maybe by a cunning omnic in a full body replica. Well, not too cunning. They forgot the part where Hanzo doesn’t do anything fun.

                “Of course I do. I’m just capable of discretion,” Hanzo says, standing and brushing away nonexistent wrinkles.  Genji doesn’t buy it for a second.

                “If you did, you could prove it. Let’s go somewhere you like.”

                “Absolutely not,” Hanzo puts on his best scowl, but Genji only laughs.

                “That’s because there’s no such place. Fine, I’ll show you how to have fun.”

                Hanzo bumps his shoulder when he stands, but he’s in a good humor. Genji knows a perfect place, cool but not real a party scene, with phenomenal bartenders. There’s a room in the back with a great view, and he’s sure he can get it for the two of them. It might actually be nice, catching up with his brother.

                Side by side, they leave the castle into the warm Hanamura night.

**Author's Note:**

> In The Tale of Genji there is a Kodama, and it seemed as good a name as any. I just couldn’t do Ramen. Also look, daw, they’re being brothers!!! I totally didn't do that just to make everything worse. 
> 
> Thanks for reading and feel free to hmu at https://saltytothecore.tumblr.com/


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